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I am pulling the transaxle out of the parts car that I bought for $200 and spent $750 transporting home at the peak of gas prices:(.

I am having trouble with the lousy roll pin on the shift linkage. I sprayed some penetrating oil on it, but i doubt that will do anything. Is there special centering punch I can order to assist with this? Should I just keep using the penetrating oil every day for a few days?

I have released the nuts and bolts on the rear of the drive shaft. Why are the washers not on the nut side of the bolts? I think I changed this on my verde last summer, oh well.

I disconnected the half shafts at the wheel bearings.

What is the best way to proceed? I want to pull the entire case inlucluding the diff.

Should I disconnect the cross member and remove the front Dedion bolt and move the whole case forward, over the dedion? Sounds hard.

Should I disconnect the unit from the trans mounts, disconnect the rear mount and remove out the back? Those trans mounts are a pain.

What will be easiest?

You CAN do it with the DeDion still in there, but man! Much harder... A lift is best - find access or do jackstands under the body! BE CAREFUL!

Take the DeDion out first...

The big bolt in the rear of the TA is last when everything else is loose...

Hint: Use tie-strap to keep clutch slave compressed (slip it over and out of housing fast and back in together with tie-strap...

With DeDion out do the TA.

On that pin - use a punch that is NOT small and centering - it sprawls it open even more and makes it stick - use one that is just big enough to fit inside of the hole in the little "L" linkage and hit the rolled-pin on it's edges....!

I have a flat, non centering punch that I have been trying to use without success. It seems to be a close match to the size of the pin. The problem is that since the pin is flush with the surface of the linkage, I cant tell if I am lining the punch up perfectly enough. I have not been able to make it budge.
Once it moves the first mm, I should have smooth sailing.

JJ,
Good point about the clutch slave. I screwed that part up last time around and when I went to bleed the clutch...broke the bleeder!
My plan to hold the slave piston in was pure northern Wisconsin. I had drilled four holes in a beer bottle cap and strung it up with zip ties. It kept slipping off and it was then too late. This time I may try a plastic screw cap. Anyone have a better idea?
Since I am cheap and didnt want to wait for a new clutch slave, I bled it by cracking the nut on the fluid line. Sketchy. PITA

Zambon, the easiest way to get the trans out is pull the trans and dedion as one unit, the only real trick is to make something to hold the back of the trans in the dedion, a short thick piece of wood will work, then all you have to do is remove the 6 bolts from the front trans/dedion mount, disconect the shifter at the shifter, the drive shaft, disconnect the rear sway bar and the rear shocks and the one big bolt in the rear trans mount, plus brake line and clutch line, you can then roll the whole thing out from under the car. Leave the front of the car on the gound and jack the rear up as high as you can and support the car with jack stands, you may need two jacks, one front one rear to set the unit on the ground, but the whole process can be done in an hour depending on how freely the bolts let go.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will take the advice and pull the whole dedion.

Sam
One hour! You are good. I have already spent 20 minutes fussing around with the damned roll pin on the shift linkage

My way:

Car on high jack stands (resting on body!), extra set near by and two floor trolley jacks.
An extra set of hands is nice but not a must.

Remove half shafts/drive shafts at the diff flanges, remove the brake calipers and hang them in zip-ties, remove the brake discs. Loosen the "T"-joint in the brake lines from the box.

Loosen all electrical wires to the box.

Loosen the six bolts under the de-Dion beam, it will drop a few cm but not more, use a jack to support it if it feels better. Put a jack under the rear part of the box (but not too far, try to eye where the CG might be and aim for that, around the intermediate flange is a good start) and loosen the rear mount. Loosen the lower shock nuts (careful, de-Dion tube might drop down a bit. It will still be held up by the watts linkage though).

Lower the box a bit to gain access to the shift linkage, remove the whole linkage from the shifter axle.

Loosen the four bolts holding the clutch housing to the box.
This is a real bitch of a job but with some crafty tool bending skills it is possible to get it off.

Now the box should be free and resting on the jack.
Lift it up high enough to be able to move rearwards above the de-Dion tube to pull the input shaft clear of the clutch, then drop the front end down and lower the whole thing down while sliding it forward to clear the de-Dion tube.

Done.

The first time I did this it took me 1½ hours to get it down all by myself. The beauty is that you don't have to split any hydraulic lines or handbrake cable and don't have to touch the donuts.
Refitting took something similar in time and no bleeding or anything, very nice unless you need to work on the clutch. Well I guess you can work on the clutch as well but you need to do it under the car.

i'm just doing this very job on my 75 also,

but the rear mount bolt refuses to come out of the rubber mount,

the nut is off, but when i turn the bolt it turns the rubber mount with it too

i've sprayed plenty of penetrating oil in there, left it a few days, tried again and also given it a good clout, but the bolt is firmly stuck in there

any ideas....?

simon

Hack-saw blade or like we use to do it, Tiger-saw.

Thanks Mats,
I already disconnected the driveshaft and I am going to overhaul the clutch in this case, but your method sounds very good for a fast change of synchros.
I am going to get this box ready as a spare and swap it in your way when it is needed.

Simon, Have you tried wrenching the bolt to break it free? Maybe put an impact wrench on it, I think there is a metal sleeve in the rear mount and that is where it froze. If you put an impact on it and it spins the bushing in the rubber then you may have to cut it out or enlarge the hole on one side to get the bushing out too.

Yeah, it's more like a trackside boxs-swapping procedure.

Well I have already eclipsed all of the time estimates on this board
Yesterday I spent the afternoon hunting for the Snap-On truck so I could buy special roll pin punches.
I tried them and they worked great. It was easier because the punches center themselves. I was able to hammer much more efficiently knowing that my punch was spot on.
Still I couldnt move the damned thing any.
I tried warming it with a propane torch for a while but it was no use. Next is the welding torch, then the sawzall

Rollpins

What can also help is to wedge a block of wood between the shift rod and the body so that all of the punch's force is sent to the roll pin, otherwise the energy is dissipated by the movement of the rod.If all else fails drill it out.Given all the smashing you've had to do I would recommend that you take a good look at the half-moon which is welded to the back of the shift rod as the welds can break and you end up with a useless shifter.

Zambon

If you have the proper roll pin removing punch, and the roll pins still won’t come out; well the sad news is that, they are most likely rusted and seized in place, and are not going to come out without a drill or something similar.

Some years ago I dismantled a Verde from the rustbelt. Everything underneath the car was rusted and had to hammered and hacksawed loose. I pulled the transaxle from the car but I couldn’t remove the clutch from the transaxle, until I had the removed the roll pin from the last part of the shift linkage; the funny looking piece of metal that is attached to the transaxle shift rod by the accursed roll pin. Eventually I took the transaxle to a machine shop that had an ESD (electronic spark discharge) machine. The ESD machine vaporized the roll pin without damaging the shift rod. I was then finally able to get the damm thing apart and found that that clutch was in near new condition.

The shop charged $50 USD for the ESD operation and it was well worth it.

Bye for Now

Milanoguy
1987 Milano
Houston Texas, USA